That's no lady, that's my mum
Janet Barron
SYLVIA'S LOT by Teresa Waugh Sinclair-Stevenson, £14.99, pp. 218 Divorce, loneliness, alcoholism and suicide might not seem promising topics for a light-hearted summer read, yet Teresa Waugh has managed to make them so. Sylvia's Lot is a funny novel about despera- tion and manipulation. Sylvia Appleby is divorced from Frederick, a clergyman who ought to have been defrocked. The names of her now adult children testify to his strange obsessions. Gatey, the daughter, is `Pyronia', the butterfly otherwise known as 'the Gatekeeper', and Evidence, the son, is called after an outsider which netted Frederick a handsome win in the 3.30 at Lincoln on the day of the boy's birth. They have gone their separate ways. Evidence has become a prissy computer expert, unable to express his emotions towards anyone. Gatey smokes dope and lives in a London squat. Sylvia herself has become a housekeeper to an abominable man who abused his beautiful daughter, and ex- husband Fred has hit the bottle. At the head of the family is the awful Lady Field, a woman of many pretensions and a lethal talent for exploitation. As the novel is more about characters than it is about plot, the family tensions thus created provide its structure.
Teresa Waugh has a way of entering into interior monologues which is entirely con- vincing, and she brings the family vividly to life. Lady Field is a spurious 'lady', as her husband was knighted after their divorce, when he had eloped with a dubious- sounding Belgian woman. If challenged on the chronology, Lady Field conveniently forgets, and relies on her carefully dense screen-memories. Her commanding airs are all too real. She can force her 'grand- daughter-in-law' Milly to traverse half of Manchester to bring her a tin of cat food. She is sorry for herself to an impossible degree, a caricature of an old crone to whom no one dare say no. One of the curi- ous impacts of this book is to arouse a silent prayer of thanksgiving that one is not related to any of its characters.
Sylvia occupies the servants' quarters of the Old Rectory, a presumptuous house near Battle. Her employer, Percy Hardcastle, is a maudlin old drunk, who does little more than sway about, ask Sylvia to many him, and try to forget embarrass- ing scenes the morning after. His daughter Jocelyn is a prat of the first order, the sort of Sloane you hoped had gone the way of Thatcherism. Sylvia tries to like them, but can only recoil in horror at their decadence and misery. She turns instead to the odd- jobs man, a little chap called Wilf, who seems to offer her only chance of happi- ness.
'Sylvia's Lot' is indeed a desperate one, but the novel is entertaining and touching, and ultimately optimistic. As a map of class-ridden modern Britain it could serve as a gazetteer. Fans of the light touch of Alison Lurie will find much to smile at here. As Gatey innocently puts it, it is sur- prising there are not more murders. For a hot afternoon in the garden, with a glass or two of chilled wine, Teresa Waugh is a charming and amiable companion. She portrays her heroine Sylvia seeking escape in the works of Dick Francis; she could justifiably have gone one step further, and have her seek solace in a lovely Waugh.
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